Introducing Matrix 1.0 and the Matrix.org Foundation

Matrix’s ID system is still evolving. Currently you have internal mxids of form @user:domain, and then the concept of identity servers which map third party IDs (3PIDs: email addresses and phone numbers) to mxids. Technically you can use 3PIDs to migrate accounts between homeservers, but as they are optional people tend not to rely on it.

We are about to launch a mission post-1.0 to replace mxids with public keys however, as per https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1228. This then paves the way to decentralised accounts: any server which hosts the private key of that user would be eligible to host that user’s data. It’s at least a few months off though.